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Comment by lyu07282 | Hacker News Reader

I think the people who think "free market" will fix any problem are the same exact people who think that it would be a great idea if companies are allowed to own their own fiber or put thousands of satellites into orbit. They will see it as a problem of regulations that it is too cumbersome to put fiber into the ground as a company, and advocate for deregulation, "micro trenching" and privatization, that in order to "let the market do its thing" you need to deregulate the ISPs, get rid of net neutrality, get rid of the FCC, privatize all publicly owned infrastructure not yet privatized. Its the exact cancer of an ideology that made US and European infrastructure a joke.

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The problem here is, unironically, caused by the government getting involved. Many of these companies are granted legal monopoles in their service areas. If someone dares to start a competitor, the incumbent harasses them with lawsuits to try to shut them out. The free market isn't all sunshine and rainbows (and natural monopolies like infrastructure are a place where it frequently fails), but the market is not particularly free in this case.

No the problem is that it just doesn't work no matter how much faith you have in the free market. The whole point is to get over this crazy ideology and think rationally about it, the problem isn't "caused by the government getting involved" it's caused by people who think like you, running the government. The article explains this very well you should read it:

> True capitalism requires competition. But infrastructure is a natural monopoly. If you treat it like a regular consumer product, you don’t get competition. You get waste, or you get a monopoly.

> The Swiss model understands this. They built the infrastructure once, as a shared, neutral asset, and then let the market compete on the services that run over it.

> Its the exact cancer of an ideology that made US and European infrastructure a joke.

The cancer isn't deregulation or regulation but rather regulatory capture.

Making the barrier of entry to the market so high that nobody can compete with existing players. Nearly every dysfunctional market in the US could be made better by deregulation, not because regulation is bad but because it's badly regulated.

> Making the barrier of entry to the market so high that nobody can compete with existing players.

You have to understand that some things can not be different. Lets take an example that is simpler, that even libertarians might understand: Streets, you can not privatize streets. You can not have a market where companies build streets and compete for customers to use their streets. Because you can not build 5 different streets to the same place. Infrastructure like fiber internet is like streets, you can't have 5 different companies rip open every street to every house and put fiber into it.

We have private streets in California.

Sorry don't have the crayons right now to explain it to you

I keep telling you not to eat the crayons...

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